Hacking Story
Lots of stories are relevant to the creation of Stray Cinema.
Michelle and I first started talking about this film sometime last year. That was when it was just a regular, common-or-garden short film - a good idea for a short film, a well-planned short film with talent working on it whose abilities are borne out in the footage you see on the site, but, still, a short film like any other. At that stage all I was able to do was suggest ways in which Michelle might realise the film she wanted to make. I was at Film School, geeking out on Michael Mann, Michael Winterbottom and the usual Film School fodder, so most of my suggestions were probably geared toward making the movie look somewhere between Code 46, Collateral and 2046.
Flash forward to early 2006, and Michelle and I started talking about what to do with the footage. (Actually, first we caught up for beer at Matterhorn, and being as I hadn't seen her for about three years, that was in itself damned pleasant. And then we got to talking about the movie). It was mentioned (probably by me, seeings as I was reservedly recommending a book to Michelle) that Pattern Recognition, William Gibson's seminal book on media and trendspotting and all that good stuff, was somewhat overrated (oohh look, she ends up with the boy, it must be a happy ending), but that there was definitely something there.
Which led to thinking about storytelling. And storytelling as the core programming language of the human experience engine. And what might happen if you took story and ran it through the Hive - what would happen, basically, if you applied the this-minute-once-again-trendy hacker ethic to storytelling. If you told Hiro Protagonist he had to streamline your story code.
Of course this is far from new. I mean, I feel like I'm insulting you fine people just by clarifying that this isn't new. Those old-time figures, the shamans and firelit poets you hear so much about when we're talking about the roots of story, were basically - in the oh-so-po-mo analogy we seem to be building - a series of successive refiners of the source code of the first stories. Gilgamesh, Beowulf, the usual suspects - these were open-source narratives refined by the community which used them. For our purposes, Seamus Heaney's lyrical retelling of Beowulf is just vx.1 of a piece of code whose core routines have been refined ad infinitum but also cribbed and used in other programs until the core components are far too entropised to trace.
Story is story, across the board. But in our time, the way most people get their story, the frame of reference that hits the most bases, is cinema. And cinema, while communal, is far indeed from open. The program code for cinema goes through very private phases and very communal phases; but it must, in all the traditional models, end up closed. You can Bubble this; you can shoot first; you can even attempt to rid this goddamn debate of motherfucking snakes. Whichever way you cut it, cinema is collaborative, but not communal - in the sense that movies made outside of the traditional hierarchical framework just plain don't work.
So at what point might we be able to hack cinema? Wellsir, how about if we go back to those beers at the Matterhorn, and one of us or the other - let's say it was our indefagitable director - says, "or we could post the footage online"?
So the story, the footage, the performamce - all these things are performed by trained professionals under controlled conditions. And then we open the whole thing wide open, and the world gets to cut it. And we see what happens.
The last story I'll invoke is that of the Little Red Hen. Because while Michelle and I met with professionals and designers and coders and so forth in the path to bringing Stray Cinema online, at some point I decided, y'know what, that wheat ain't gonna be no bread soon enough for my liking. Having injected my thoughts and principles and so forth into the discussion, I took my leave of the project. And don't I feel like a fool now!
Because Michelle has got the thing up and running, and it's gathering steam, and people are pulling me up out of nowhere and asking, "have you heard about that chick who's put the movie online?" And I get to say, "um, yeah, I co-founded that site. I don't have much to do with it now, though. Michelle did all the impressive stuff".
So hopefully little jags like this will be a nice opportunity for me to return to spouting psuedo-philosophy regarding the motives of Stray Cinema. What a good idea!
Jumpcut.com, and my interview with OpenBusiness
By michelle, 5 years, 2 months ago - No Comments
Jumpcut.com is a website that we considered partnering with at the beginning stages of our Stray Cinema planning. Ya know, back in the day. It is a film remixing website that allows its online community to remix other peoples video clips, and provides users with easy to use online editing software, making editing accessible to all.
We were thinking about hosting our footage on the site, and then letting people use the Jumpcut editing tools to remix our footage. The only problem was that the type of file it output was a flash file, which would have made it hard when our finalists had to edit a high quality version of their film for our screening, so we decided against it.
Just found out yesterday (thanks Dan) that Jumpcut has been sold to Yahoo. Anyways, I liked the little snippet that Jumpcut put on their blog
“We have worked hard to pioneer great online video editing technology that can truly enhance the online video world by enabling anyone to become a creator. Joining forces with Yahoo! Video will provide the resources to bring Jumpcut users and our partners more great social media experiences. As part of Yahoo! we’ll be working on bringing video editing and remixing to everyone with an Internet connection.
Jumpcut is the next step in the evolution of social media from simply sharing and commenting on video to remixing, interacting with and creating a social dialogue around media resulting in new forms of cultural and artistic expression. We’re excited about this development and look forward to more innovation in the online video space. Most importantly we’d like to thank the Jumpcut community for your support, enthusiasm and creativity that inspires us and guides our vision.”
Um, in other news, I did an interview with UK website OpenBusiness.cc, and it was published today. Have a look and let me know what you think.
Interview with Nightline
By michelle, 5 years, 2 months ago - 2 comments
I had an interview with Nightline this afternoon (a late night NZ news show). It was quite exciting, as Stray Cinema has had coverage in press, radio and online media, but this our first TV appearance (thanks to Mr. Pepperell for the lead).
They filmed (at my suggestion) the interview at my house, in my room. I think they were quite amused by the fact that this project is beaming out of some girl’s room in Newtown NZ.
It is kinda funny though right. I mean of course there are other people helping on the project – Daniel Winter for example is my right hand man, and our community add the content on our website from here on in. However most of Stray Cinema has been conceived, cultured and nurtured here in my wee room.
I am now a correspondent for www.cinemaminima.com
Ok, sorry for lack of posting…I have been a little distracted by the real world over the last few days. Don’t worry, it never lasts long, the real world has only so much it can offer me. Mwahaha (geek, I’m a geek).
I have also been awake for far too many hours today, so this is going to be a short post.
I have been asked to be a correspondent for Cinema Minima (“Every day thousands of movie makers read Cinema Minima. Its worldwide network of correspondents covers movie making, tools, editing, rights, story, sound, acting, and distribution. Based in Los Angeles, it has been online since 1999.”), after they found & wrote a story about Stray Cinema. It’s sweet, as I can put updates on the site about Stray Cinema, and also write about other interesting goings on if I have the time.
Here is my first post – The conception of Stray Cinema – an open source film. Please have a read, and comment.
Getting very excited as we now have 10 submissions. This means we are a third of the way there, to organizing a date for our screening (6 months from the day we have 30 entrants).
Can’t wait to book my tickets…anyone else planning on coming along?
A little memory I’ve just had…
By michelle, 5 years, 3 months ago - No Comments
When we first started developing the concept of Stray Cinema – an open source film, my friend Rob kept asking me the same question over and over again "what sets Stray Cinema apart from anything else that’s ever been done before". He does alot of branding stuff, so a valid question to ask I guess.
It really frustrated me this question, because it seemed that all aspects of Stray Cinema had been done before in some way (there is even a few other open source films – shock horror)!
Then I clicked. It wasn't the separate components of Stray Cinema (i.e. open source film, online community, film screening, user generated content and competition) that made it unique, it was the combination of the ideas and the way they worked together and leveraged off each other. Our point of difference was that Stray Cinema is a complete journey that touches on different ideas each step of the way. There is a strong online component of Stray Cinema, especially right now as we try to build up a global community, however, we want to acknowledge that important things still happen in the ‘real world’. People still want to see their film screened on a big screen, and have live audience interaction and response to their work. People like to too see, talk to and touch other people. It’s in our nature. Hence the navigation from online to real world with our screening.
Anyway, just wanted to share this little memory of Stray Cinema’s conception with you. It seemed fitting just after its one month anniversary. Awwww.
In other news, this is my first summer in Wellington NZ (o.k. we are still one month off), and it feels like winter. It’s blooming cold here!
By homage, 5 years, 2 months ago - No Comments